Wine and chocolate

It is once again the time of the year where we'll be eating plenty of chocolate, Valentines's day is the day in which lovers will give each other plenty of chocolate in thousand shapes and flavours so I decided to play with chocolate and Italian wine and find matches.. what a long and pleasant day has been.

Chocolate has always been seen like something that was too much for the wine and has always been matched with other alcoholic drinks such as Rum and Cognac but this has changed thanks to a wave of wine lovers and experts happy to play with the subject and come up with their recommendations. However, this is not an easy task to the complexity of the chocolate itself and the infinite variety and the ingredients used.

I was recently asked to write a column about this subject, and as example I had thought of two famous Italian dessert wines, the Vin Santo and the Recioto di Soave, both wines match perfectly two different types of chocolate but then, when drinking a fantastic Amarone, I had some left in the glass, a box of chocolate appeared on the table so I decided to see whether I could find the perfect match for my wine. After a few less successful attempts, I did it.

I found the perfect match in the Diplomat, a chocolate made with almonds, hazelnuts and milk chocolate but I am very confident that a chocolate made with hazelnuts and milk chocolate match perfectly with the Amarone.

Vin Santo on the other side, is renowned for being a perfect match for the cantuccini with chocolate whilst the Recioto del Soave for matching perfectly the dark chocolate. There are plenty of other matched already made but I suggest you to try and experiment and see whether you can find your perfect match.

However, as a principle, a few considerations must be made with regard to the wine. It is not possible to match all wines, only wines with certain characteristics can be matched with chocolate and those are complex wine, either sweet or aged, and with a high alcohol content. Why not come to one of our wine and chocolate tasting where you will be given plenty of chocolate and wine to play with and find your perfect match.